For example, if you write a word processor, the back end code can work on all platforms, all you have to do is write the UIs for each screen size and off you go to the app stores.

WinRT supports exactly this scenario. I write a Metro tablet app and get a desktop app "for free", when WP8 ships I get a phone app either for free or nearly free. I mean everyone's noticed that "snapped" views in a Win8 app are periously close to the layout of a typical phone screen, right?

Phase one of Apple's Metro clusterfuck is called Launchpad. Phase 2 is anyone's guess, but it's coming. We're about to enter a dark age of UI on both platforms (Win8/Metro and i/OSX).

No, that's adding iOS to OS X. What Microsoft is doing, and what many imply Apple has to do, is add Explorer to WP (and thus Finder to iOS).

They already have started adding (completely useless) elements of finder to iOS. Swipe to the left of the home screen and you get presto - a superfluous implementation of Spotlight.

Anyway my point wasn't to draw a specific software analogy, but rather to indicate that both companies are making the same anus decisions right now and implementing them in the same anus kinds of ways.

I'd would guess that in 5 years we'll be back to mobile and desktop being totally siloed from each other, but in the meantime a lot of "platform integration" kludges are going to be thrown at the OSes in a spaghetti-see-what-sticks manner.

Anyway my point wasn't to draw a specific software analogy, but rather to indicate that both companies are making the same anus decisions right now and implementing them in the same anus kinds of ways.

Why are they anus? PC computing is typically done on a mobile device like a laptop, therefore although the jury's out on touch, all the other cross pollination stuff like lock screens and religious monitoring of battery life makes sense. I personally think finger touch is just another UI paradigm in the bucket along with mouse/kb/stylus/voice so expanding OS' out to support that at least for some stuff makes sense.

The metro clusterfuck will never happen on OSX. The situation with metro vs desktop mode is against apple's philosophy. They would rather just dump legacy that do something like metro.

You must be joking? Apple has taken back compat very seriously. Not to the same degree as MS, but more so than MS is taking with Win8-WOA at least. Do you not remember app compat with pre-OSX apps? Or app-compat with PowerPC apps?

The metro clusterfuck will never happen on OSX. The situation with metro vs desktop mode is against apple's philosophy. They would rather just dump legacy that do something like metro.

Do you not remember the Carbon/Cocoa thing? Rosetta? Apple's not crazy enough to dump legacy overnight.

Those were transitional and largely transparent to end users. But at the end of the day, Apple dropped legacy support every few years since OSX was released.

You've now completely contradicted yourself. At first it was "they'd ... just dump legacy". Now it's "they drop legacy every few years". Given that there is no support for legacy with WOA, and Metro apps are fresh (re)start of their existing app platforms, then how are you coming to your position? It sounds to me like you don't even know what WinRT/Matro are at all.

Phase one of Apple's Metro clusterfuck is called Launchpad. Phase 2 is anyone's guess, but it's coming. We're about to enter a dark age of UI on both platforms (Win8/Metro and i/OSX).

No, that's adding iOS to OS X. What Microsoft is doing, and what many imply Apple has to do, is add Explorer to WP (and thus Finder to iOS).

I believe (based on absolutely no evidence) that Lion was the last major release of MacOS X. With Jobs gone, the iOS people are now firmly in control, and the future of Macs is iOS.

I suspect we might see the first tentative signs of iOS growing tendrils it needs to take over the Mac with iPad 3. If has some features that might conceivably be of equal or greater value on some ARM-based MacBook AIR/iPad transformer device, well, remember you heard it here twelfth.

Phase one of Apple's Metro clusterfuck is called Launchpad. Phase 2 is anyone's guess, but it's coming. We're about to enter a dark age of UI on both platforms (Win8/Metro and i/OSX).

LaunchPad must be manually invoked to be seen, and is entirely optional. You 4 finger pinch to bring it up, click the app you want to launch, and it then disappears. All prior methods of launching apps remain in OS X. If you don't bring LaunchPad up, you will never see it. People seem to think Apple replaced the OS X desktop with a grid of icons. They did not.

I believe (based on absolutely no evidence) that Lion was the last major release of MacOS X. With Jobs gone, the iOS people are now firmly in control, and the future of Macs is iOS.

I suspect we might see the first tentative signs of iOS growing tendrils it needs to take over the Mac with iPad 3. If has some features that might conceivably be of equal or greater value on some ARM-based MacBook AIR/iPad transformer device, well, remember you heard it here twelfth.

As long as iBook Author, XCode, and other tools are OS X only, we have not seen the last of OS X.

For one, iOS still doesn't have (as intimated by my other posts) Finder. I believe (with lots of prior precedent) that Apple doesn't want to create an iOS version of Finder because it's a hard problem. Until that problem is solved, OS X will continue to evolve and grow alongside iOS.

Also, iOS doesn't have pointer support. That's another big deal for content creation. So until iOS gains pointer + Finder support in one way or another, OS X will remain alive even if it is at a much reduced rate.

Phase one of Apple's Metro clusterfuck is called Launchpad. Phase 2 is anyone's guess, but it's coming. We're about to enter a dark age of UI on both platforms (Win8/Metro and i/OSX).

No, that's adding iOS to OS X. What Microsoft is doing, and what many imply Apple has to do, is add Explorer to WP (and thus Finder to iOS).

They already have started adding (completely useless) elements of finder to iOS. Swipe to the left of the home screen and you get presto - a superfluous implementation of Spotlight.

What? It's not superfluous at all. I use it all the time to find Apps, emails, notes, reminders, etc. Again, Spotlight isn't Explorer/Finder. Spotlight is an indexing, search, and presentation technology that potentially replaces the Finder (I use it on my Mac to find documents, apps, etc), but isn't itself the Finder.

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Anyway my point wasn't to draw a specific software analogy, but rather to indicate that both companies are making the same anus decisions right now and implementing them in the same anus kinds of ways.

Adding useful features to iOS (aka Spotlight) isn't the same as refusing to update old features to new paradigms (aka Windows Desktop Mode).

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I'd would guess that in 5 years we'll be back to mobile and desktop being totally siloed from each other, but in the meantime a lot of "platform integration" kludges are going to be thrown at the OSes in a spaghetti-see-what-sticks manner.

I would argue that in 5 years Apple and Microsoft will have solved the "consumer friendly Finder/Explorer UX" and the silos will disappear, but only because I believe Apple will steadfastly keep the two siloed for another two or three years to maximize Mac and iOS sales.

Also, iOS doesn't have pointer support. That's another big deal for content creation. So until iOS gains pointer + Finder support in one way or another, OS X will remain alive even if it is at a much reduced rate.

I agree with all of the above, but MacOS X as developer platform makes it a rather niche player in Apple's lineup compared to iOS. Especially if/when the Air goes iOS. That'll starve it of developer resources meaning it'll die almost by default.

I said last *major* version. I realise you could interpret this as sophistry, but I'm not suggesting Apple won't keep pushing out minor updates, and maybe even updates of the scale of Snow Leopard. But I have a feeling we've seen the last of the big bang, cat-branded, consumer-focused, features-heavy Mac OS X releases.

Phase one of Apple's Metro clusterfuck is called Launchpad. Phase 2 is anyone's guess, but it's coming. We're about to enter a dark age of UI on both platforms (Win8/Metro and i/OSX).

LaunchPad must be manually invoked to be seen, and is entirely optional. You 4 finger pinch to bring it up, click the app you want to launch, and it then disappears. All prior methods of launching apps remain in OS X. If you don't bring LaunchPad up, you will never see it. People seem to think Apple replaced the OS X desktop with a grid of icons. They did not.

Exactly. Want a comparable analogy to the Metro Start Screen on OSX? Doesn't exist currently, but could, if Launchpad opened up whenever you hit Space+Period to invoke Spotlight.

Oh, and completely obscured your background rather than just blur it.

...and was in a completely different graphical style to the environment you were just in.

I don't need Launchpad - so I don't hit that key. Some coming from iOS may love it, so they'll use it. That my friends, is actually "no compromise".

I agree with all of the above, but MacOS X as developer platform makes it a rather niche player in Apple's lineup compared to iOS. Especially if/when the Air goes iOS. That'll starve it of developer resources meaning it'll die almost by default.

But as long as it can "export" binaries to iOS, and hardware is produced (perhaps even eventually including sanctioned "hackintoshes") why is this a problem?

A lot of developers live in a "compile here, deploy there" kind of world.

I said last *major* version. I realise you could interpret this as sophistry, but I'm not suggesting Apple won't keep pushing out minor updates, and maybe even updates of the scale of Snow Leopard. But I have a feeling we've seen the last of the big bang, cat-branded, consumer-focused, features-heavy Mac OS X releases.

Okay, if that's how you define "minor", I'll caveat it by saying OS X will continue to see major content-focused, developer-heavy releases.

In other words, make it the ultimate developer and content machine; built in hadoop, built in XFS (or whatever), built in XSAN, integration of hadoop with XGrid, etc.

I would say the exact opposite. They're so radically different in everything except branding. Have you used them? There isn't a lot of common technical ground.

That is not right. It's the same OS, basically, and they share many (if not most) core components. (Many companies port apps over from iOS to OS X, and vice versa.) But very different UI/UX, and that's pretty important.

The merging of iOS and OS X is inevitable, but I'm not at all clear how they'll get there, or what the timeline will be. I don't think Apple is interested in designing a single UX that scales from phones to traditional PCs - they're very focused on making device-focused experiences. It'll be interesting to see how they respond to Metro's challenge.

They'll probably respond by dropping the entry price of iPads to $399. Maybe with an 8" device or by keeping the iPad 2 or stripping the iPad 2 of key features, or some combination of all of the above.

Saying iOS will replace OSX is like saying everyone's going to stop sitting on couches because office chairs have wheels.

I guess, since iOS and MacOS X are, more or less, the same OS, there comes a point at which the distinction becomes one more of branding than technical.

I would say the exact opposite. They're so radically different in everything except branding. Have you used them? There isn't a lot of common technical ground.

There is a mountain of technical commonality. I believe it was Bertrand Serlet who said during the 2009 or 2010 WWDC that iOS and OS X share about 85% of their code base. Craig Federighi discussed this further during the 2011 WWDC. The two platforms only start to diverge at the UIKit(iOS)/AppKit(OSX) level at the top of the stack.

Yeah and the interface is the only element that's pertinent to this conversation - a conversation about the way people perceive and use the operating system. By your argument, iOS never existed in the first place as anything but a skin for OSX.

Like yeah the kernel and shit are the same, but you don't use them in even close to a similar way. Nor should you. They're for totally different jobs. That's my point. And that's why any attempt to merge them is complete anus.

THe only real thing I'm trying to say here is that iOS is a dumbed-down, feature-stripped OS for situations in which you don't need or want any access to complex distracting stuff - ie. on crowded busses or when you're a total computer neanderthal. OSX is for when you need a better control over the system, like at home, making a movie, with a mouse, etc. That dichotomy is absolute and irreconcilable.

But people will try to reconcile it. At MS and Apple. And we'll end up with OSes that are good for neither case. Or 'skins' that are so radically different that the discussion becomes completely academic.

Yeah and the interface is the only element that's pertinent to this conversation - a conversation about the way people perceive and use the operating system. By your argument, iOS never existed in the first place as anything but a skin for OSX.

Like yeah the kernel and shit are the same, but you don't use them in even close to a similar way. Nor should you. They're for totally different jobs. That's my point. And that's why any attempt to merge them is complete anus.

THe only real thing I'm trying to say here is that iOS is a dumbed-down, feature-stripped OS for situations in which you don't need or want any access to complex distracting stuff - ie. on crowded busses or when you're a total computer neanderthal. OSX is for when you need a better control over the system, like at home, making a movie, with a mouse, etc. That dichotomy is absolute and irreconcilable.

But people will try to reconcile it. At MS and Apple. And we'll end up with OSes that are good for neither case. Or 'skins' that are so radically different that the discussion becomes completely academic.

You specifically said "There isn't a lot of common technical ground". We (or at least I) were simply correcting that inaccurate statement. I agree that it isn't a foregone conclusion that iOS and OS X will merge in the way I think many people envision that merger. But technical underpinnings will not play into that.

Launchpad is an iOS-styled (additional/optional and fairly minor) variation on the Dock's Applications folder grid view — which we've had for some time. It can hardly mark a major turning point. There are a couple more iOS stylings in Lion (natural scrolling and disappearing scrollbars). It doesn't look like much more than a familiar nod to iOS users.

I like the zen scrollbars, have to fine-tune natural scrolling (swipes work for me, scrolling in windows doesn't) and ignore Launchpad (nothing objectionable really, can't be bothered to organise it).

iCloud is more the turning point. Losing iDisk and going to iOS app-related document management is an obvious signal. Not that iDisk was widespread (it worked well enough for me to lazily ignore my Dropbox account, which I'll soon reinvigorate). More that iCloud will be.

The metro clusterfuck will never happen on OSX. The situation with metro vs desktop mode is against apple's philosophy. They would rather just dump legacy that do something like metro.

Do you not remember the Carbon/Cocoa thing? Rosetta? Apple's not crazy enough to dump legacy overnight.

Those were transitional and largely transparent to end users. But at the end of the day, Apple dropped legacy support every few years since OSX was released.

You've now completely contradicted yourself. At first it was "they'd ... just dump legacy". Now it's "they drop legacy every few years". Given that there is no support for legacy with WOA, and Metro apps are fresh (re)start of their existing app platforms, then how are you coming to your position? It sounds to me like you don't even know what WinRT/Matro are at all.

A couple of years of a transitional framework is dumping legacy support.

From my perspective the big impact is that MS Office never seems to catch up properly and you have to be very careful about Adobe CS version purchases for forward and backward compatibility.

Think about it, Office 2004 has VB in it, 2008 didn't port it, now Office 2011 has it, but Office 2011 up until recently has had some serious show stopping bugs (especially excel). However, if you have a Lion PC, the only option for VB is Office 2011. The end result is for serious users of Office, the best solution is to run Office for Windows in a VM.

While MS can't completely wash themselves of blame for this, a big part of the problems with office are a direct result of Apple dropping support for legacy frameworks quickly. Or worse yet, not fixing bugs (e.g. issues with Spaces on Office 2008) in legacy frameworks quickly.

Sure all those new Carbon Apps are great, but apple is certainly very aggressive at dropping legacy support.

The metro clusterfuck will never happen on OSX. The situation with metro vs desktop mode is against apple's philosophy. They would rather just dump legacy that do something like metro.

Do you not remember the Carbon/Cocoa thing? Rosetta? Apple's not crazy enough to dump legacy overnight.

Those were transitional and largely transparent to end users. But at the end of the day, Apple dropped legacy support every few years since OSX was released.

You've now completely contradicted yourself. At first it was "they'd ... just dump legacy". Now it's "they drop legacy every few years". Given that there is no support for legacy with WOA, and Metro apps are fresh (re)start of their existing app platforms, then how are you coming to your position? It sounds to me like you don't even know what WinRT/Matro are at all.

A couple of years of a transitional framework is dumping legacy support.

No it is not. That doesn't even make sense.

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From my perspective the big impact is that MS Office never seems to catch up properly and you have to be very careful about Adobe CS version purchases for forward and backward compatibility.

The same is true for OSX. MS is, again, not different than Apple here.

On dropping Mac and/or desktop OS X, note that in absolute terms Mac is worth almost as much to Apple as Server and Tools is to Microsoft.

On Windows, we can see iPad is up there. Win is dipping before Win 8 intro (you can see the pattern for Win 7) and iPad is growing. Interesting to see the trajectories during the course of this year. Let's hope Microsoft breaks out their tablet (or is it two tablets) income.

Add iPhone and it's no contest of course, but that's a bit skewed as Win Phone is struggling to make an impression.

I'm really hesitant to speculate too deeply about MS' potential branding of WOA at this point, but I wonder if they're going to pursue a strategy of "Windows 8 Tablet/Slate/Handheld" being "Metro only" and then having a "Windows 8 Tablet Productivity Pack" including the desktop apps being a ~$50 upgrade on that. Firstly, it would reduce exposure of the messy desktop kludge to people who just want a consumption device, and secondly it would definitely save cost on the device as far as storage and peripheral support goes. This way, they also leave open the option of extending capability back to the desktop in the future on WOA for Pro/Workstation-SKUs, or just letting Desktop-on-WOA die altogether if x86/64 becomes competitive enough in the tablet space.

Classic Microsoft is "all things for all people".Robbie Bach and J.Allard would be "a few things for most people".

Neither is the perfect approach at this point. I think Microsoft needs, "Most things for most people". Or, in other words, "Like an iPad but better".

Microsoft needs to ride multiple horses here, and that's the problem and the solution. They need to be able to go all in on Atom/x86 if Medfield and Ivy Bridge pan out. They need to be able to go all in on ARM if Medfield flops. They need to support their classic PC infrastructure on Ivy Bridge until either ARM or Medfield win (or, if they tie, support both platforms).

There's no clean cut path, and it's not like Microsoft to pick a winner (the way Apple tries) and then make it so.

THe only real thing I'm trying to say here is that iOS is a dumbed-down, feature-stripped OS for situations in which you don't need or want any access to complex distracting stuff - ie. on crowded busses or when you're a total computer neanderthal. OSX is for when you need a better control over the system, like at home, making a movie, with a mouse, etc. That dichotomy is absolute and irreconcilable.

This makes perfect sense in 2012, but I think you'll find it looks remarkably silly by 2022.

The one thing that has been true of every computer market I know of from mainframes to minicomputers to servers to PCs to tablets is that function accumulates.

Software doesn't wear out and yesterday's software is the base for tomorrow's additions.

We're only at the dawn of what touch can do and Siri and the cloud are basically brand new toys that we don't know what we want to do with them yet.

I think people are going to in the not terribly distant future control their lives and their businesses from the tablet on the bus. The only thing not making that obvious now is the fundamentally spotty nature of the wireless support we get.

But, I could readily foresee someone doing a lot of operational control of a server farm, controlling a water purification plant, or darn near anything else you can think of. The only real limit is whether the functionality simply cannot be shrunk to provide the necessary and safe control in the context of a given, limited screen (maybe you can't layer a dynamite factory's control functions and need that 24 inch dual screen on site).

Every new form factor simplifies a bit -- initially. Then, it grows up and takes on heaps more function.

Trivial for instance: A couple of months ago, I saw no tablets on planes. Now, I'd say it is already somewhere between 30 and 50 per cent; at least it was on my last flight a couple of days ago. And, there was WiFi on the plane. http://www.southwest.com/wifi/

There may be an opportunity here for MS longer term, even. I think that eventually the whole notion of the App store will actually get in the way of sales; AFAICT, enterprises are already being allowed to bypass the store. It's only a matter of time before someone (maybe MS) recognizes that the a single store gets in the way of deploying stuff that's too complex, varied, multi-company, and above all high quantity (in terms of app count) for a single location and a single company to manage.

MS is probably not as wedded to the idea of the exclusive store (which isn't that big a moneymaker even for Apple); we'll see if this is the sort of thing that Ballmer can seize and give MS an edge. It would seem natural, but it would require Ballmer to stop imitating Apple.

The merging of iOS and OS X is inevitable, but I'm not at all clear how they'll get there, or what the timeline will be. I don't think Apple is interested in designing a single UX that scales from phones to traditional PCs - they're very focused on making device-focused experiences. It'll be interesting to see how they respond to Metro's challenge.

I hope Apple take a slightly different approach. I would like the iPhone or iPad to be able to run iOS orMac OSX depending upon user input. When the the iPhone or iPad is used by itself it presents the user with iOS, the touch UX and the iOS library of apps. If a monitor, keyboard and mouse are connected then it presents the user with Mac OSX interface and those applications. The device knows what "OS" to present to the user based upon the input the user picks.

And I don't think it wold be difficult to pull this off. Obviously iOS would have to go to x86 instead of ARM (or Mac OSX goes ARM) but I think this is a possibility as Atom gets more competitive with ARM at the lower process nodes. Maybe a 22 nm Atom chip could be turning point for Apple. Local storage could be a problem but with LTE and iCloud maybe users could stream some of their apps on demand and only keep a small number of commonly used apps and data on the SSD.

The merging of iOS and OS X is inevitable, but I'm not at all clear how they'll get there, or what the timeline will be. I don't think Apple is interested in designing a single UX that scales from phones to traditional PCs - they're very focused on making device-focused experiences. It'll be interesting to see how they respond to Metro's challenge.

I hope Apple take a slightly different approach. I would like the iPhone or iPad to be able to run iOS orMac OSX depending upon user input. When the the iPhone or iPad is used by itself it presents the user with iOS, the touch UX and the iOS library of apps. If a monitor, keyboard and mouse are connected then it presents the user with Mac OSX interface and those applications. The device knows what "OS" to present to the user based upon the input the user picks.

And I don't think it wold be difficult to pull this off. Obviously iOS would have to go to x86 instead of ARM (or Mac OSX goes ARM) but I think this is a possibility as Atom gets more competitive with ARM at the lower process nodes. Maybe a 22 nm Atom chip could be turning point for Apple. Local storage could be a problem but with LTE and iCloud maybe users could stream some of their apps on demand and only keep a small number of commonly used apps and data on the SSD.

You call it a different approach but it's dangerously close to what Microsoft is trying with Windows 8 if you think about it.

The only difference is the transition isn't automatic. The user decides.

YMMV but I think the Win8 approach of just expanding "supported inputs" to touch is better than two competing OS front ends. I mean what if you want to launch an iOS app with a mouse/KB attached? Would you have to write a touch app and a KB/mouse app?

YMMV but I think the Win8 approach of just expanding "supported inputs" to touch is better than two competing OS front ends. I mean what if you want to launch an iOS app with a mouse/KB attached? Would you have to write a touch app and a KB/mouse app?

YMMV but I think the Win8 approach of just expanding "supported inputs" to touch is better than two competing OS front ends. I mean what if you want to launch an iOS app with a mouse/KB attached? Would you have to write a touch app and a KB/mouse app?

That's a hypothetical question for the moment because Apple hasn't added mouse support to iOS but I would imagine that Apple's answer would be similar to the iPhone/iPad arrangement where apps have UIs appropriate for the form-factor but share back-end code. I'd also expect them to allow developers to choose whether they want to target one or multiple form-factors/input methods with one download.

I think the Windows 8 approach will obviously result in a compromise. It's a better compromise than in Windows 7 where users were expected to touch a desktop application. But using a touch app with a mouse is still a compromise because the UI components will be far larger than necessary. Maybe Metro provides developers with the ability to adjust their UI based on now it's being used but so far I haven't heard that being discussed.

YMMV but I think the Win8 approach of just expanding "supported inputs" to touch is better than two competing OS front ends. I mean what if you want to launch an iOS app with a mouse/KB attached? Would you have to write a touch app and a KB/mouse app?